Motivated by the current (2011) political climate in Wisconsin it seems reasonable to devote some time and effort to comment on issues and some of the hyperbole. So we in the public should do what we can to help focus "journalists" on delineating real facts versus spin. If you accept the spin you do not understand the policy implications.

Thursday, December 15, 2011

Is Wisconsin any different?

From the story, one should listen to the link, unfortunately it was not embeddable ...

Tres Whitlock is stuck in a public school where he feels ignored. He wants out.The 17-year-old would-be video game designer researched his options online and found his perfect match: Pivot Charter School.

"It's computer-based, and I think I will do better," he says.But when Whitlock tried to enroll in the school, he found a series of barriers in his way. The reason? He has cerebral palsy, and school officials say they don't have anyone to take Whitlock to the bathroom.

Whitlock and his parents are convinced their story isn't unique — and enrollment data backs them.

A StateImpact Florida/Miami Herald investigation shows most charter schools in Florida are failing to serve students with severe disabilities.

Statewide, 86 percent of charter schools do not have any students classified as severely disabled. That's despite state and federal laws that require charter schools to give equal access to these students.

Which political party or political entity supports policies/laws, directly or indirectly, that foster EUGENICS?

Do you think denying educational opportunity to physically challenged children is a good public policy or bad public policy?

Do you see a connection between using state laws to control how local school districts operate as a good idea or bad idea?

Do you see using state law as a way to shift tax dollars from public schools to private schools (aka, charter schools) without local control as good policy.

Do you see allowing private schools to avoid providing the same educational opportunities as public schools as a good idea, especially without community input or control.

Although these ideas are proposed in the guise of economy and efficiency, while increasing the quality of educational opportunity, they seek efficiency while denying some families and children the opportunity to fully participate in society. In another era, while not as brutal today, this is not a great deal different than deciding who may have children, who will be sterilized, who will be taken from their family, who will be institutionalized, who will be sent to camps. The justification by prominent men at the time, and even state governments in the U.S. until recently was EUGENICS.

2012.03.03 - Russian style toppling ... Ever since I put this TED talk up (12/11/11) by Srđa Popović I noticed I was getting a lot of traffic from Russia ... now Foreign Policy (FP) may have provided at least part of the answer ...

Kto may do most of his work alone, but he isn’t exactly working in a vacuum. An extraordinary upswell of public protest in recent months has flooded the Russian streets, shaking assumptions about the stability of a political culture dominated for the past 12 years by Vladimir Putin, the former president and current prime minister. The overwhelming majority of these protestors -- young, educated, and self-aware -- are newcomers to politics, recently galvanized into action. But while their appearance on the scene may have caught political analysts off guard, the style and symbols of their protest have been many years in the making -- forged by street artists like Kto and his ilk, often operating in plain sight of the authorities.

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Srđa Popović was one of the founders and key organizers with the Serbian student nonviolent resistance group Otpor! Their nonviolent campaign to unseat Serbian president Slobodan Milošević met with success in October 2000, when hundreds of thousands of protestors converged upon and took over the Serbian Parliament, effectively ending Milošević's rule. Srđa says that 2011 is already "A Very Bad Year For Very Bad Guys" and it is worth understanding how people power, or the real power behind the on-going dramatic events in the Arab Spring and beyond actually works. This can help us predict events and scenarios not only in the on-going Arab struggles, but also in places like Burma and Belarus.

... from the description of this video TEDxKrakow - Srdja Popovic - A bad year for bad guys

When I read a an article like this I begin to really appreciate what a privilege it is to vote and what a difference it makes about who gets elected and how that may determine how "free we really are" to express ourselves.

From the introduction about the author ... and what she was writing about last August

Maria J. Stephan is a strategic planner with the U.S. Department of State and co-author, with Erica Chenoweth, of Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict. Formerly she served as director of policy and research at the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict (ICNC) and as an adjunct professor at Georgetown University and American University. She has also been a fellow at the Kennedy School of Government's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.

A turn to armed struggle, which might seem like a good idea given all of the positive media coverage of Libya’s armed revolt, would decrease the likelihood of an opposition victory in Syria while increasing the chances of prolonged post-transition violence. I can only hope that the international community, including the U.S. government, will continue to do whatever possible—diplomatically, politically, and through sanctions—to support the gutsy nonviolent protestors in Syria and incentivize defections amongst erstwhile regime supporters. In short, while the U.S. government and our allies in the international community will strongly back the Libyan people’s quest for a democratic future, I hope that Libya’s revolution-in-progress does not become a model for the region.